


Short-Wave Radio

by Schgain



Category: BioShock, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: AU: WTNV, AU: bioshock, Alcoholism, Autistic Carlos, Body Horror, Civil War, Kidnapping, Libertarians, M/M, Multi, Multiverse, Murder, Other, POCecil, Plasmid Abuse, Racism, Sexism, Surreal horror, Violence, What do you mean not everything is a bioshock crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-12 02:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3339809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schgain/pseuds/Schgain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is always a man, a lighthouse, and a city. </p><p>There is the Voice of Night Vale, there is a blinking red light up on a mountain, there is Night Vale and its Orwellian philosophies. </p><p>There is also a city under the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Employment Fair

Carlos stares out the window at the pressurized city. He plays idly with the plastic fidget rings adorning his fingers, buttons that click and sliders tha slide and shapes that move. They're the only real colour down here- what else is there but the deep deep blue and the tarnished false-gold? 

Vaguely he thinks of places he's been to before (but not really)- remote cities in unlikely places, where there is a lighthouse and there is a man with an extremist philosophy. He thinks of Night Vale(to him a fever dream). He thinks of the ratty bibles his grandmother read (back when she was eight and lived in a city in the clouds). 

There's a chime from the PA system- they were once used mostly in public places, but it seemed even a private lab had been mandated for one. This time it is not a propaganda skit; Carlos turns an expectant ear towards it, and was not disappointed. 

The man on the announcement has a voice like ADAM, a voice like an atom bomb in Eden. Julie laughs at her joke from her desk, tells Becky to go play with the nice test kitties. 

Carlos kindly directs Becky away from the monstrosity ADAM has created, a yowling beast of nightmares and poison. Julie calls him Nyalarthotep as a joke, a spined, multi-eyed cat with a leech in its belly whose toxic spikes drip rancid-green raw ADAM. 

"Look at this sweet Calico," he says to Becky, one hand flapping idly at his side and the other holding a more normal specimen, "look how nice she is." He's not good with cats, an even less so children, but the orange tortoiseshell (Carlos doesn't know his cat breeds any more than he knows what it's like to feel the sun on him) squeaks and writhes in amiability, a broken purr and talkative meows. 

"Eve," Becky names the cat. Carlos inwardly winces at her choice. This girl was going to grow into a scientist, but there was no need for her to start now; Julie's daughter deserved to have a few years of childhood. 

Carlos lets the eight year old take the cat, and turns back to Langford. "What now, Doctor?"

"A trip to Hades and back, I imagine," she cuts, staring into a bottle of chlorophyll. 

Carlos doesn't laugh at her dim, dark humor. In a way she belongs here in Rapture- a botanical liquidator killing trees and demolishing forests with Agent Orange times ammonia and bleach times Noah and the Great Flood, her humor and philosophies are no more gentle than Demeter's wrath. Carlos is fond of her that way- she has enough of a personality that she lights up this wretched place. 

The man on the announcement speaks again, and Julie gives a wordless shout in frustration. 

"He is distracting and a nuisance!"

Carlos only half agrees with a minute nod. 

"We're not going to get anything done with him around. I'll speak to Ryan- I want you to shoot that blasted radio first chance you've got!"

Carlos nods again, staring pointedly at his paperwork. The phone rings, and he puts it to his ear. Dr. Tasha Denu is screaming about Langford spending too much time in the apiary, and Carlos almost laughs. 

"I'll cover the fees, Doctor." He placates the melittologist. Langford shoots him a quizzical glance which turns into a smirk when he mouths "Denu" over to his boss. It satisfies her, and she continues her work. 

I’m a scientist, Carlos thinks to himself. Not a botanist. I study science, not trees. So why am I here?

Julie heaves a sigh. "That's it, I'm taking a break." she sets down her equipment and places a cigarette in her mouth, struggling to light it with a silver lighter cunningly commissioned to look like a lily of the valley. Carlos wonders vaguely where she got it, until she makes eye contact again. "Doc, you're staring again."

Carlos didn't blush easily, so he just stammers and looks pointedly away. Leave it to Julie to help him with his rotten habits: she is more patient than most about his fidgeting, his staring, the way he talks. But that doesn't make him less embarrassed by it. 

"Rat bastard's trying to charge a fee to get into my Arcadia!" She grumbles. "Guess I can't complain."

"Julie, I'm going to go. There's so many scientifically intriguing communities all across Rapture! I want to see them all." Carlos interrupts, pulling off his gloves. 

"Mm? Oh alright," she snaps distractedly. "Leave this old betty to rot with her compost in peace, would you?"

Carlos laughs weakly. "See you tomorrow, Julie. Becky," he amends with a nod toward the girl. 

Carlos scurries out of the research center with more vim than he expects, and dimly hopes how eager he is to leave doesn't offend Julie. 

"You look wonderful today," an oak whispers. Carlos starts and stares at it; a man in a red and white cloak is sitting in the boughs, grinning wildly. 

"Thanks," Carlos nods, and decides to get the fuck out of Arcadia. 

\---

Cecil isn't smiling. 

Well, maybe he is. Andrew can hardly tell with the radio host. The eye seems to slide off his face, only grabbing a few tertiary details before forgetting what the man looks like. It's frustrating, to say the least. Andrew hasn't gotten a photo of Palmer yet. 

Diana, from her end of the fainting couch, is scowling. She's made a comment before about how she didn't like a colored man in Andrew's office. Ryan personally can't care less what Diana thinks about who he hires, because Cecil's the damned best at what he does. Andrew chuckles at the thought of Diana getting up in a toss about him. 

"About your public radio," Ryan muses. Cecil, for the brief moment eyes could manage to see him, looks expectant but not unwary. "It is a public radio. Should you not gain from your efforts?"

Cecil's brow furrows, a movement in the corner of Ryan's vision. "It's a community radio station, not Talk About Cecil's Life station. Do people pay for the usual PA? It's like, why bother charging for the news?"

Ryan shakes his head slowly and examines the rings on Cecil's fingers. They're cogged and moulded, and they don't tick. A few have teeth, a few have black tar pulsing. On his thumb, a dial spins lazily. His head is aching for looking at Palmer too long. Vaguely he tears up, eyes watering from lack of blinking and because Cecil looks luminescent. 

"It is only right that you get your dues. You work, you labor. Nothing in life is free: the newspaper is a commodity for which we pay, so why should your radio be any different?"

Cecil frowns, of this Ryan is sure. He doesn't respond for a moment, but the room's air is thick with silence, thicker than gel or ADAM or the ocean's pressure. 

Ryan realizes that Cecil is almost as powerful as he. He is the Voice of Rapture, like Andrew is the soul, MacDonough the veins, the Waleses the skeleton. If he could meet this man's eyes, Ryan thinks Cecil would be scowling deep into his soul. 

"Let 'im do what he wants!" Diana whines. "He's not hurting no one by not chargin' by the hour." 

Ryan glares at her to shut her up. 

"Take it up with Station Management." Ryan suggests to cecil. 

"Right away, Andrew Ryan," Cecil says stiffly and turns to go. 

Diana mutters about "those colored folk" before trying to garner Andrew's attention. 

Ryan gets up and leaves her alone. 

\---

Carlos was going to give a speech in Apollo Square about Science, but he decides against it when he sees the dangling corpse of Pamela Winchell being taken down by Sullivan. 

So there's that plan ruined. Carlos sighs and looks a little lost, and a little silly, in his lab coat stained green at the hems. The bit of Julia stuck in his head suggests a drink or a smoke. He ignores her influence, and instead looks up at a flower-shaped speaker as a ballad introduces the daily news. 

"An elite Atlantic community where the industry is an oyster, the sea is incomparable, and the heroes of our great city work for our benefit while whalesong lulls us to sleep.

Welcome to Rapture."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the timeline just gets fucked.

Carlos spends his days working in silence next to Julie, who finds camaraderie in drink and smoke. He wishes things were simpler, he wishes he could love the material world and revel in the little bits of life down here. His fingers, tangled in a heap of ligament and skin and tendon, press buttons and work keys and Julie scolds him for staring too long at nothing, so his hand flaps at his side until his father’s voice in his head say two words that make him stop flapping and start trembling. 

 

Julie makes him sit down and mutters that she won’t be paying him by the hour if this keeps up. If he were able to focus on his words instead of seeing colours he would laugh, probably, but he only holds his own wrist and watches his pulse make his fingers twitch. 

He finds himself in Arcadia later under a tree that won’t stop with the compliments until he threatens the hissing, sultry voice with acid to their face. He’s listening to the radio that hangs from his belt unused and neglected, and static clings to the Voice of Rapture from disrepair. 

The man on the radio (Cecil, the credits call him) says things no man would dare say in Rapture, reports the goings-on behind wharf gates and beneath abandoned bars. Carlos wonders how the man can get away with it all. 

“The man came to Apollo Square yesterday, with the intent of telling the community how scientifically-invigorating Rapture was! He didn’t get to, after Former City Council Member Pamela Winchell- ahem -retired. But he gave this smile, sad and understanding, like he didn’t expect any different. His teeth were like a military cemetery, and when he spoke, I fell in love instantly.” 

Carlos laughs so hard he wakes up in the medical pavilion, a woman with dark hair and a face like a hawk looming over him. 

“Doctor Steinman say he does not help fainted Negroes. I say to him, the man is clearly Mexican. He doesn’t listen. All Steinman cares about is cleft chin and symmetry and the fair faces that litter his operating tables like confetti. So I tend to you. Doctor Tenenbaum.” 

Carlos weakly smiles up at her before sitting. “How long was I out?”

“Only hour or so. You laugh, says Marquis. You don’t get oxygen, and you faint. Hilarious, she says. Wishes she had camera.” 

“Marquis?” Carlos winces as he tugs on his hair in the vain attempt to relieve his headache. 

“Nurse here. Good pharmacist. Will be best if filthy amateurs give a damn.” She waves her hand dismissively. She is about to say something else, but a Rapture Reminder plays and she only rolls her eyes. “Andrew Ryan say there is quality on this radio, but this another of Ryan’s lies. The only quality is that man Cecil. He is good philosopher.” 

“What can you tell me about Cecil, Dr. Tenenbaum?” Carlos leans forward a bit, his hands clutching around a mug that Tenenbaum offers. 

Tenenbaum takes a shuddering breath. “In German prison camp, I meet Cecil Palmer. He say, German soldiers find his boat in French waters. Cecil is Navajo code talker. The Germans, they say this is lie. Say he is escaped man from Bergen Belsen, Cecil Pines. So they take him to nearest prison camp to be processed.” Unsubtlety, she pours what remains in a curved flask into her coffee. “He is young, he is not yet adult. He comes to children’s wing on day of selection. I walk into room with mentor, Doctor Leiber. He points to Cecil immediately. I ask, why do you think him? He says, ‘This boy he has the purple eyes.’ I look, and yes. His eyes are so purple it is not possible. I tell Leiber, you will not kill this boy.” 

“And then what?”

“I see him next in Poland refugee camp. Broken mirror around him. I say to him, I am scientist. He says, I am radio host, and we laugh.” She stills her shaking hands, and Carlos wants to say something. "Cecil say something in mirror try to kill him. I say he is mad from starving. Cecil does not laugh then. He nudge glass shard with foot, flips onto non reflective side. I take note. He mentions step-brother and sister and brother. His mother died in America, I find out. His other family not on the records. So I say to him, we will move to America together when you are not ill. He thinks this good idea. Why do you question the lives of radio hosts?"

Carlos shrugs. "He mentioned me on the radio."

"He is a good man. One of few left." Tenenbaum sighs fondly and downs her coffee. "Do not stay long in the medical pavillion. And Doctor?"

Carlos pauses in buttoning up his lab coat to look at Brigid, and swing his feet off the medical bed. She looks worried, harried, infinitely older in that moment, but her smile turns something softer. It is tired, but it is genuine. Carlos can't help but feel that she had something important to say.

"Try ADAM products. It may help you with work."

Carlos nods, as solemnly as he can manage with his spinning head. 

\---

"The only sunlight that flickers down here are from the lighthouse's solar discs," Cecil thinks to himself, over and over as though trying to convince himself of this truth. "By definition it can be called moonlight."

Cecil is very fond of the moon. 

His eyes glow a dull black, almost purple. Puncture wounds litter his wrists where washed out tattoos of nautical imagery do not proclaim. 

He's kept his mind, he's kept his mind, he has. Cecil pulls at the crossbeams and hydraulics of the radio station's booth. He doesn't know where he ends and the booth begins, and teeth crunch underfoot when he shifts his limbs. 

Ghosts of the past scream and sing and tell stories. Genetic memory from reuseable ADAM, he dimly recalls Brigid Tenenbaum explain. He doesn't care. 

A hand fitted with wires and pipes divert from his mouth to touch a smooth jaw, featherings of premature grey at temples. There's nothing there. 

Cecil needs another shot. 

Somewhere between finding an EVE hypodermic needle and doing horoscopes, he begins sobbing on air. Loud enough that the only people in the station come to his booth and check up on the abomination. 

"Aquarius: Your boyfriend is trapped in an alternate desert dimension. It is difficult to say when he will return. Perhaps take up drinking while crying in a quiet room." 

Cecil laughs static and think he's done enough of that. 

Bill McDonough has been trying to fix the radio station's pipes for three months. All they do is spew carbon monoxide, but that lady on the phone line says it is definitely just maple syrup. He wrinkles his nose and wishes her a "good'un" before closing the pipes off before a blokes done gets himself choked in here. 

He muses dryly if Mr. Palmer even breathes. 

Dana gives him a smile. Ever since the Lutzes got their sweet Masha taken to the orphanage, Cardinal keeps his wee tot under close eye and far from the cameras. Tenenbaum's too much of an odd sort for her to trust him, no matter what she says about atonement. 

"What's the 'ost up to these days?" Bill asks awkwardly. Drop your H, you damn fool! He thinks to himself. It's a subtle question that will be overlooked if a bot happens to hear them. "Rumor 'as- HAS it he was going t' be one a them big daddies."

Dana looks mournful. "He's been doing... Better. The McDaniels quintuplets and Mara have been pestering them about who's getting elected to Ryan's Council." Her tone makes Bill think she's fond of neither 

"Mara? The homeless lady who's spent a night in every building in the city?" Bill asks. Dana smiles and nods. The engineer gives a low whistle. "Christ, Rapture's really gone to crumbs, ain't it?"

"Most of us would agree." Dana says with another nod.


End file.
